Boys of Summer - 1985

1985, a hot summer afternoon in Brisbane, I’m 14 and on the train home from school.  This is a steel aluminum train carriage with vinyl seats.  The train is not air conditioned and I’m sure it has sat in a rail yard somewhere, heating up all day before starting its run at 3pm to take me and my friends from Central Station to Zillmere.

There's a guy in my class we called Wally.  He played five-eight in the rugby team, so we called him Wally.  He played guitar.  It was stinking hot.  There was a metallic smell of sweat on the train.  Everyone’s shirt was sticking to their back and our legs itched from the rough cloth of grey school uniform trousers.  We were on a later train, maybe we’d had detention.

Wally is on this train too and he’s late too because he’s been into town and bought sheet music.  He hands it to me and it's this song that I’ve been hearing on the radio, a lot.  Don Henley, Boys of Summer. It isn't my favourite song at that time, but as I read the words the tune and the beat infect me.  I lipread/sing all the way through it.  Don Henley’s nostalgic yearnings affect me, even though I’m 14 and there is no rational reason why I should feel nostalgic about anything.  I have no idea what a Dead Head sticker might be or mean.

I went to a boy's school.  No girls.  I had no sisters and girls were just never around.  I was 14 and like most boys that age girls were the most interesting thing

When our train pulled into certain stations, girls from girls’ schools would be on the platform.  We’d lean out the window, say hello to them. Sometimes they’d say hello back and then I really had no idea what to do next.

By this stinking hot day, we had progressed to some very brief conversations with girls from St Rita’s.  One of them changed the game that afternoon.  Instead of just saying hello back, she got onto our train, and into our carriage. 

She hadn’t done that before.  She stood in the carriage and stared at me.  I didn’t notice at first.  I was reading/singing Boys of Summer.  As the song ended in my head (including the long guitar solo at the end) I looked up and there she was.  She smiled at me and I blushed for all I was worth. 

She got off at the next stop.  Presumably, she went to the other side of the platform and went back to Albion station and home.

Wally told me I should ask her out, so eventually, I did.  A few weeks later I kissed her in a cinema while Nightmare on Elm Street 2 played.  We were in the company of 4 of her closest friends.  What was her name?  Lisa, Leanne, I cannot even say.  I cannot even say if we broke up because I still don’t know, 30-odd years later, if snogging in the cinema and holding hands in the Queen Street Mall counts as going out.

When I hear that song I feel the heat and the smell of that carriage and the realisation that I was the reason she was on the wrong train.  It was Lisa.  It was definitely Lisa.